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Diaryland is a service you can use to host your online diary or weblog. One late night (November 21), I decided to sign up and then purchase their "Gold Membership" for a year, which allows you to host pics, etc. on the site. This cost $24; however, I was not worried as they offered a 30-day money-back guarantee.
The next day I woke up and realized I spent $24 on something I most certainly did not need. I wrote to [protected]@diaryland.com (which is linked off of their main page as the "best way" to get in touch with them) requesting a refund. No response. No refund.
On December 11, I wrote them for a second time. No response. No refund.
On December 20, I wrote them for a third time (still within the 30 days). No... well, you get the picture.
In January, I disputed the charge with PayPal. I emailed Diaryland at [protected]@diaryland.com, [protected]@diaryland.com, and I found an online form, which I filled out with the info. Nothing. I went back today to PayPal to look at the "open case." Whoops! I filed too late. It was now between me and the vendor.
I emailed Diaryland again today, and I disputed the charge with my credit card company. I also contacted Consumerist.com with my story. Finally, I also Googled "Diaryland refund" and saw that other people had the same problem as me. No refund. No response.
I write this, 1. Because I still want my money back as promised and 2. I don't want others to purchase from this site. They do not respond to communications. And they definitely do NOT follow through with their "guarantee."
The complaint has been investigated and resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.
Dear Carl,
Wow, I am not sure when you wrote this, recently or long ago (I am writing this January 11, 2019), but it is, at least, a comfort seeing it. To me, Diaryland.com are absolute crooks and I am now seriously thinking of a way of getting them totally taken down, if they even exist at all (they seem to be, but even if there is a weak pulse, they are unconscious).
My story is that I used to write on their site quite a lot and I really loved the site, as did a great many other people at the time. I ended up writing 120 essays that I posted on their site. I realize that some of what people write on there is junk, and I am probably in that category as well, but I had developed quite a large following of readers who continued extensive correspondence with me, so there was some value in what I wrote, both for me and for others. If nothing else, they are a part of my writing history and that is meaningful to me.
For some reason, people's interest in Diaryland began to diminish, maybe because the times were changing and people were reading and writing much less as a whole. I do not remember why I stopped writing on that site, but instead created a blog on Blogspot. I had a link to my Diaryland postings on my Blogspot site and people were easily accessing those Diaryland writings, which made a complete picture with the two sites.
However, one day, a friend wrote me and said that clicking on the link to my Diaryland postings got them nowhere, they could not access the entires. So I checked it out myself and found out that Diaryland had archived all of my 120 essays. If I clicked on the title of an entry, any of the entires, a notice would pop up explaining that the entries had been archived, but that a writer could get them unarchived (and have copies even sent to them) if they paid a fee of $19, which would also get them a Gold Membership, or some such.
I can see from your experience that for some reason Diaryland mutated into a pay site wherein writers had to buy a membership in order to write their entries. But, as I see you realized, why do that...after all, my Blogspot blog was free. However, it would be a valuable service to me for Diaryland to restore to me my 120 essays and so I submitted to them the $19 and believed them when they said that somebody would get right back to me. Which, as you experienced, nobody ever did, nor did anybody ever respond to messages that I sent to their contact e-mail address. Essentially, they acted like Diaryland is a dead website, and for all I know, it actually is. I was very disappointed at losing my 120 blog entries.
However, when I got my credit card bill, sitting there was the $19.00 charge. How was I being charged if this was a dead site? Now I got angry...they certainly should not get this money since all they did was ignore me! I called my credit card company and explained the situation and said that surely they had a way to contact the company, at least knew their telephone number, if they were in a position to transmit money to them, you know? I suppose that was highly unusual, I don't know, but wouldn't the credit card have some responsibility to protect their users? Essentially, this was fraud, I was being falsely charged for a service I had not received, that charge therefore had been made by a crook. So the credit card company accepted that as a claim of fraud, cancelled my card and issued me a new one. The customer service person said that they would investigate, and for sure, I would not have to pay that $19.00. Well, that was good, at least.
I had to fill out all their fraud claim paperwork in order to substantiate this issue, which was fine, I've gone through crooks fraudulently using my credit cards several times, about once a year this happens, some crook makes fraudulent charges on some account of mine. Meanwhile, I still wanted my writings back and kept thinking that if they are still operating, I still needed to get in contact with them. All I really needed was for them to provide back my blog entires...how hard would that be? I did Who-is searches and finally found a phone number for reporting abuse. I had no idea who or what that phone number would be calling, but at least I felt armed by that. But I felt I would wait until my credit card company finally presented to me the findings of their investigation, since my primary motive was getting my blog entires restored to me and perhaps the credit card company would verify if this was still a viable company or not.
Well, a month went by and lo and behold, I see that $19.00 charge on my new credit card bill. I realized that now was the time to call that Who-is abuse line, as the credit card company had made no progress, but guess what, the Who-is abuse line is a scam, too. All you get is a recording saying that you have to call between 9:00 in the morning and 11:00 in the evening, Greenwhich time, when I WAS calling within that window. So even the abuse line is abuse.
It turns out that Diaryland (and, I presume, all of its ilk) are locked up and protected better than a gold repository. So all they do is hang a sign out claiming to provide services for you for a fee that they never provide, like their site is now nothing but on-line fly-paper gathering up fraudulent money from innocent users, while apparently the users are blocked at every turn from having any recourse.
At this point I am now truly wracking my brain to figure out how to get them completely taken down. There must be a way, because obviously what they are doing is criminal. If you have any ideas (other than "just forget it and move on"), I would love to hear it. I actually would forget it and move on, except I trusted them with a huge amount of my creative output, and for the abuse of that, they do not deserve to continue to be able to do what they are doing. Meanwhile, I have made sure that I have backed up on my home computer all my Blogspot entires, which I certainly should have done with my Diaryland writings. But I was younger and more trusting then. Now I know much better exactly what really goes on behind the scenes for consumers of Internet services--it borders on scum and villainy.
Kindest regards,
Tom Osborne
thomasdosborneii@att.net
I attempted to add a photo (the fraudulent fly-paper that brings in the fees), but apparently all that action does is delete the whole comment. I attempted this twice. If those two actually went through, I apologize.
I wish I had seen this before trying to get my account back from Diaryland. I saw that my profile was inactive/archived and thought that paying $11.99 for a 3 month sub would enable me to activate my account, see past entries and start posting to Diaryland again.
I got the run around on the website and found my way to the page stating if I paid $19, I would be able to access my archived entries. My very first entry was on 8-16-03 and my last entry was on 3-31-14. Let's just say, I have A LOT of entries. I'm not sure why I stopped and I why I thought to start back up, but I did. I missed being able to anonymously spill my guts for anyone to see.
Since I had tried to reactive my account during the July 4th Holiday weekend, I thought I'd give them a couple of days to activate my account and give me access to my old entries. Days went by and I sent out my first email. No response. I sent another email a week later. Nothing. I sent my last email a few days ago on the 12th and still nothing.
Every time I logged in, I'd see other active accounts online. I was happy that the website was still being used, but frustrated at the lack of response. Now, I see this site and the now common complaint. I've reached out to my Bank in the hopes of getting a refund for the $11.99 and $19.00. Oh, and Diaryland doesn't state this, but you get charged a currency conversion fee. I am based out of the US and I believe the company is based out of Canada, or their merchant services are.
I'm angry that they willfully have this payment feature on their website knowing that no administrator runs it or cares to respond to people. I'm sad that I'll never be able to access my archived entries and back them up. That's 11 years worth of me spilling my guts out.
You've just saved me $19, but I was determined. I logged in and got the page that you mentioned, but I've just clicked on edit posts and I can see the editable versions of your diary entries.
Not the same, but at least they're not gone forever
Well wish I had seen this first. I paid my $19. No service no reply nada. But I’m going to contact my card company in the morning and report the charge as a fraudulent company. This is just bonkers